


Muse

by DaughterofElros



Category: Original Work
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterofElros/pseuds/DaughterofElros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brilliant young novelist with an unconventional Muse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Muse

** Muse **

 

Imagery escapes me in my old age. In my youth, writing came easily, racing to scratch words upon the page before my head got too far ahead of my hand. I’d stay awake into the wee hours of the morning hunched over the notebooks at my desk, or awaken from a dream, scrambling to light a candle and make record of my thoughts before they slipped away into the ether. I had a notebook that I carried everywhere with me, for inspiration struck often and without warning. On one memorable occasion, I was attending a ball put on by the Countess Devane (in her later years, after the Count had passed on) and had forgotten the notebook on my dressing table. Struck by my muse in the midst of the festivities, I was obliged to find the nearest available object upon which to write, which turned out to be one of the Countess’ finest cloth napkins. I was forgiven, of course, being a reasonably notable person, having penned already three novels, each of which had met with great acclaim.

They loved my stories, truly. Loved me for writing them. And I reveled in the praise the critics and friends showered upon me. It seemed it only made my rich imagination all the more fertile. Within that decade I was first published, I took my readers all around the world- to the decks of a pirate ship in a maritime adventure, an exploration of Siberia, a novel of Scientific Fiction featuring a fearsome monster and the lady they were too late to save from its clutches, doomed love in India, a piece set in historical France, even a novella about the American frontier and a Murder-mystery serial that the  crowds swarmed the newsstands in order to possess.  Fame and Fortune became my bedfellows, and I reveled in it.

But now… Now the notebooks lie, dusty and unused upon the desk I haven’t sat at, in a room whose door has remained closed for ages. I haven’t so much as picked up my pen in fifteen years. It’s astounding how quickly a celebrated author can fade into obscurity once he loses his muse. A bad novel, berated and quickly forgotten, followed by a wretched novel that no one even talked about and I became a broken man. I realize now, of course, that it was her. She was simultaneously the greatest joy and worst mistake of my life.

A woman of minor nobility from a family that had fallen into dire financial straits- she married an older merchant who left her widowed within a year of the ceremony, she entranced me. With the freedom of a widow and a bachelor, we became lovers. For months, the fount of my writing flourished as ever, through our brief courtship and engagement. Only after our marriage did the change occur. It was as though my muse had suddenly stormed out of my life, slamming the door behind him and rattling me to the soul.

Odd, I suppose that I pictured my muse as a man. Most writers and artists would claim their muse to be a nubile young woman, beautiful and ephemeral as a water-nymph. My Muse was most unequivocally a man. Young, a studious sort of fellow. His features never seemed to change- he looked the same the day I met him as a boy of fifteen contemplating my first writing endeavor as he did the day I last saw him when I was a man of thirty-eight. His hair was blonde, a contrast to my own darker locks. But we had the same sort of face, the same look about our eyes, although his laughed more than my own. From the day I met him, he became my constant friend and companion- he stopped in nearly every day, at least when I was alone. I would tell him my ideas, he would offer comment or criticism, and do the same with pages I had written. I took him to be a manifestation of my subconscious, for a bit, being as no one else could see him. But over the years my conviction as to what exactly he was became hazy- primarily due to the fact that I found it unlikely a manifestation of my subconscious would be able to draw diagrams and pictures or make corrections in the margins of my notebook, or disagree with me as much as he did. Whatever he was, though, he made my writing what it was. I wrote to impress him, I suppose and in doing so managed to impress the reviewers and critics and crowds. Perhaps it was a psychosis on my part, but he seemed to me as real as anyone I’d ever met. I wrote him into my novels- the first mate of the pirate ship, the lover in India, the Detective in the serial, even the French nobleman in the history.

But when I married… he disappeared overnight. Without my muse, my writing was rubbish, at best. Perhaps he felt that his place in my life had been taken by my bride, and left out of pain or jealousy. Regardless, he had taken my talent with him. I tried at first, writing for my wife. But she only ever nodded and smiled and said that it was very good. Nothing in her eyes was ever brilliant, certainly she never remarked that something was wretched, thought I knew beyond a doubt that some of what I had handed her was despicably, shamefully bad.

At first, I began to drown my fears, my shame in spirits, then thought of the idea of writing letters to him occurred to me, begging him to return- that I would do anything for him, if he would just return to me, and things could be as they once were. When after a time, this produced no results, I felt myself begin to break. I cried, I moaned, I shouted in anger when I was alone in my study, attempting to write. I finished the last half of the novel I had been working on, then began another. The months dragged on, and my pretty wife became concerned. I came home from a vexing engagement with my publisher to find her sitting at the table in our dining room, my papers stacked in front of her. It was an awful, cold fight- she had discovered my pleading letters to my muse, the notes, the drawings he had left me when he was still a part of my life. Voice shaking, she informed me that she would not be married to a man afflicted with “that French Disease” and that the annulment papers were being drawn up.

 Perhaps if my Muse were someone of flesh and blood, her assumptions would have even had some foundation. I had never thought of it that way, but all the same could not argue that I cared more for my writing, my talent and my inspiration than I did for her. I didn’t argue with her. When the papers arrived, I signed them without a second thought because I hoped if my marriage could be undone with such ease, so could his absence.

I finished that novel I’d been working on and published it; it sold so few copies I was not asked to write another, and I could not bring myself to return to my study, to my desk, to my work. I put the pen down and have not picked it up for fifteen years and a number of months and weeks, until today. For today I awoke, in the aching body of a man who despite his years has passed from a man of middling years to a man of old age, watching death upon the horizon and padded to the window to overlook my flowers. I have filled my time since I gave up my ambition with gardening, puttering through the flowers. Every life needs some beauty, and since I cannot find it inside myself, I seek to cultivate it. This morning though, in the bright sunlight, sitting upon the garden bench is my Muse, glancing up at my window and looking just the same as he did forty years ago when I was just a lad of fifteen. I struggled to open the window, to speak to him, for I did not trust him not to disappear by the time I made it out of doors.

“I’ve come back for you, Old Man” he said, a quirk of a smile on his lips. “But before you come outside to me… write it all down.”

 

And now I have. He has stood watching me, as I fill these pages, leaning upon the doorjamb that leads from my study to the great outdoors, sunlight pouring across his face. The light has crept across the floor and through the open window. There is a bird outside, chirping, and a light breeze that swirls the dust motes lazily. I feel the sunlight soaking into my skin and seem to sense again the light exuberance of my youth. My Muse holds out his hand- a gesture of forgiveness, of apology, of invitation. It is time for us to write my next great adventure.

 

 

\---------Located at the scene of Mr. A.C. Wortheley's disappearance, as reported by his housekeeper Mrs. Helen Brooks, 9/2/1901------------

\-------Re-catalogued 11/17/1974-------

\--------Converted to Digital Format 7/6/2007--------


End file.
